Welcome to the Weighted Lottery!

Use this website to submit lottery applications for noncommercial Colorado River rafting permits:

1. Create and manage your user profile, which contains your contact information, points, river trip history, and all lottery applications you've submitted or are listed on.
2. Create and submit a lottery application for a noncommercial (private) river trip when a lottery is open.
3. Pay lottery application costs.

In addition, you may also use this website to:

• Opt-in to receive notifications via email of upcoming lotteries.
• Make changes to your pending lottery application at any time before the lottery closes.
• Monitor the status of your pending lottery application, i.e., make sure payments were successful, verify Potential Alternate Trip Leaders (PATLs) have confirmed their PATL status, and double-check your lottery application.
• Find out whether or not your application was successful in a lottery.
• Fill out and submit your noncommercial river permit application, complete a trip participant list, and pay permit costs (if you won a launch date in a lottery).

For more information about the weighted lottery visit www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/weightedlottery.htm (opens in new window) or contact us at 800-959-9164 or 928-638-7843 (8am-noon MST, Mon-Fri) or grca_riv(insert the at symbol here)nps(insert a dot here)gov.

Permitting Process Overview

The following is a quick overview of the permitting process. A more detailed description of each step in the application and permitting process is given here.

Step 1: Create a profile. All persons listed as either a trip leader or a Potential Alternate Trip Leader (PATL) on a river lottery application must have a user account (profile) in this system.

Step 2: Login and create your application. Once you have a profile (and a lottery is open), you can login at any time before the lottery is run to create and submit a lottery application.

Step 3: Submit your completed application. All PATLs listed on your application must login to this system and accept their PATL status before the lottery drawing date; PATLs failing to do so will not be included in your lottery application.

Step 4: Pay launch year lottery application cost. A completed application is not active until costs are paid. Lottery applicants are required to pay a lottery application cost once per launch year. Once an application cost has been paid for a launch year, you can apply in all later lotteries for that launch year for no additional fee. Pay the lottery application cost through this website.

Step 5: Lottery occurs on designated date. After the lottery, you will be notified of the success/failure of your lottery application by email. You can login at any time to view the status of your lottery application. If you win a launch date, you pay a trip deposit.

Step 6: Complete a river permit application, draft trip participant list, and pay final permit costs. If successful in the lottery, you will complete a noncommercial river permit application and pay your river permit costs. You will also submit a draft trip participant list. All of these are done online through this website. (detailed cost information can be found on the FAQ page at How much are permit costs?)

Step 7: River permit is issued. When the above steps are complete, the Grand Canyon River Permit Office will issue your river permit.

FAQs